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Topic: What happens when you requeen a small-cell hive? (Read 2737 times)

I am a newbie, and I have small cell bees (foundationless) from Wolf Creek Apiaries. I was wondering--if something happened to my queen and I needed to requeen, what effect would introducing a "standard sized" queen have? Would she be able to lay eggs in the cells? Assuming this is a mated queen, would the eggs she laid turn out to be standard sized bees because of their genetics, or smaller, due to to the cells they gestated in? I hope this isn't too dumb a question, but my mind is always coming up with questions. Gotta scratch the brain-itch.

I too have Wolf Creek bees. Have had them for 7 years now & the same thing happened to me before. No problems for me. Bees grow according to cell size & if you look closely the size of the queens is not very different. If you can get a SC queen, I would. If not, don't sweat it.

I almost hate to give a URL to bushfarms, since Michael is right here and would typically just answer himself, but....what you are talking about is regressing and it is fine to do. here is a url to help:

>I am a newbie, and I have small cell bees (foundationless) from Wolf Creek Apiaries. I was wondering--if something happened to my queen and I needed to requeen, what effect would introducing a "standard sized" queen have?

She would do fine as far as cell size is concerned. She may not do well as far as acclimatization. If I found a hive queenless, I would give them some open brood and eggs. Odds are you are mistaken and they are not queenless, but merely between queens with a virgin that isn't laying yet, but the eggs and brood is insurance in case they are indeed queenless.

I am in that position right now. My hive swarmed twice....I checked them 2 wks after the first swarm because I had spotted what looked like a wax moth larva almost in the hive and one under the hive. Knowing their numbers were greatly reduced...I checked each frame for wax moth. at that time there were no capped brood left..no eggs..no larva. I realize it was early for a Virgin Queen to have been mated and laying. I'll check them later this week to see if I can find eggs. I've been concerned with introducing a LC Queen. So glad I checked this section.